Nasa man expects first prototype of a spaceship that will take us between worlds within a few years

The US space agency Nasa has announced an intriguing new project called the 'Hundred Year Starship' which aims to send humans on a one-way trip to newly discovered planets across the galaxy.

"The human space programme is now really aimed at settling other worlds," said Pete Worden, director of Nasa'a Ames research laboratory, at a seminar in San Francisco. "Twenty years ago you had to whisper that in dark bars [or] get fired."

The Ames laboratory is responsible for Pioneer 10, the space probe that is currently hurtling through deep space equipped with a golden plaque describing what humans look like and the location of earth.

But while Pioneer 10 is telling the aliens - some say foolishly - where we are, the Hundred Year Starship mission is saying: 'We're coming to get you.' And the aliens have reason to be frightened: while a mere $100,000 in funding is coming from Nasa, $1 million is being provided by the US government's shadowy defence R&D agency Darpa (home to the legendary 'space bomber').

Darpa confirmed to The First Post that the 100 Year Starship project exists. It will begin as a year-long study which will examine the "business model needed to develop and mature a technology portfolio enabling long-distance manned space flight a century from now".

Paul Eremenko, Darpa's coordinator for the project, said: "The 100 Year Starship study is about more than building a spacecraft or any one specific technology."

"We endeavour to excite several generations to commit to the research and development of breakthrough technologies and cross-cutting innovations across a myriad of disciplines to advance the goal of long-distance space travel, but also to benefit mankind."

Darpa also says it hopes that the advancements achieved in the course of the 100 Year Starship project will have "substantial relevance to Department of Defense mission areas".

However, $1.1m isn't nearly enough to fund such an ambitious project as colonising new worlds and the Ames lab is hoping to attract private funding. Worden says: "We hope to inveigle some billionaires to form a Hundred Year Starship fund."

One of those billionaires could be Google co-founder Larry Page, who has already been interrogating Worden about the price of a mission to Mars - the planet that would very likely be the testing ground for more ambitious colonisation missions beyond the solar system.

Google is well known for funding what some might see as eccentric projects, the most recent example being its driverless car. Worden suggests he is very interested in space exploration: "Larry Page asked me a couple weeks ago how much it would cost to send people one way to Mars and I told him $10 billion, and his response was, 'Can you get it down to one or two billion?'" Worden sees the fact that he is arguing over price - and not feasibility - as progress of sorts.

There is no information as yet about the tricky details of generational space travel. After all, this is no five-year mission 'to boldly go where no man has gone before'. This is a one-way trip to almost certain death among the stars.

Certain questions will have to be answered: questions such as, who on earth would want to go, how do you stop the travellers staging a mutiny and turning the ship back round towards earth, or is it a form of child abuse to bring up offspring in such a claustrophobic environment?

However, Worden's answer to the question of how you live on another world is interesting. Rather than resorting to that mainstay of science fiction, terraforming, whereby an alien world is made suitable for organisms from earth, Worden suggests a solution with some root in science fact: using genetic engineering to adapt earth plants and animals - even humans - to live on Mars.

As for actually reaching alien worlds, Worden is very upbeat. "Within a few years we will see the first true prototype of a spaceship that will take us between worlds," he says. By 2030 there will be colonies on the moons of Mars, Phobos or Deimos. From there human colonists can explore the Red Planet remotely with robots.

Just don't tell them about the infamous Curse of Mars. Almost 50 per cent of missions to the Red Planet have failed.

I recall reading a science fiction novel that put forth this idea many, many years ago. Can’t remember how it ended, but somewhere along the way, the offspring of the many generations born during the voyage forgot what the mission was all about. The whole idea sounds implausible to me.

9
posted on 10/29/2010 8:40:13 PM PDT
by davisfh
(Islam is a mental illness with global social consequences)

Waaay too much time on this government goober’s hands. Just one minor critique - is it wise, is it even prudent, to risk appearing elsewhere where our “colonists’ would possibly be viewed as would savages in a log canoe, waving stone hatchets, and advancing on the Newport News Naval base wearing war paint?

Just wonderin’.

10
posted on 10/29/2010 8:54:07 PM PDT
by GladesGuru
(In a society predicated upon freedom, it is essential to examine principles,)

Sounds like Orphans of the Sky by Robert Heinlein. ("Universe", "Common Sense".)"

I really don't recall. I was quite young when I read it - maybe late teens or early twenties - and this youngster is now seventy-four. That would be fifty-odd years ago. You think Heinlein's novel would be that old?

14
posted on 10/29/2010 9:11:50 PM PDT
by davisfh
(Islam is a mental illness with global social consequences)

NASA: "The human space programme is now really aimed at settling other worlds."Obama NASA Project To Send Americans To Settle In Muslim Countries"Outreach is the way to peace," says White House. "We have much to learn."

16
posted on 10/29/2010 9:20:35 PM PDT
by WilliamofCarmichael
(If modern America's Man on Horseback is out there, Get on the damn horse already!)

I heard Glenn Beck talking about this. It seems that Obama
plans to send “disgruntled citizens” to FEMA camps sprinkled among the stars. In the White House, they refer to these poor folks as Twinklers.

Well hey, I’ll just pop on a shuttle flight to the moon and look at their scale mock up while I’m on vacation...

Oh, wait. They still haven’t managed to get next door much less anywhere in the neighborhood. And, despite what the leeches at the universities state when sucking the blood out of taxpayers, they have to make the venture profitable or it WILL FAIL.

19
posted on 10/29/2010 9:38:18 PM PDT
by IrishCatholic
(No local Communist or Socialist Party Chapter? Join the Democrats, it's the same thing!)

“The closest star to Earth is Proxima Centauri, which is 4.23 light-years away.”

IIRC, for the last 50 years, the closest star to be considered
to POSSIBLY have planets is 11 light years away, and the newly discover planets of one other star are 22 light years away.

Not to worry, FR’s resident space man, Quix, thinks that
“DISCLOSURE” is about to take place.
All of the big world govments know all about them ETs, don’tcha know? The kook to kook crowd says Obammie is gona tell us all about it, and really soon.

Within a few years we will know how to be zippin through them worm holes like greezed lightnin.
With a few click of the heals, and the magic Obammie password, you be on Youranus in a New Yawk minute !!

The closest star to Earth is Proxima Centauri, which is 4.23 light-years away.

This means that at half the speed of light, it is 8.1 years away.

Voyager I travels at 1/18,000th the speed of light. At this rate, a journey to Proxima Centauri would take it 72,000 years.

Thanks for pointing that out.

It SHOULD have been pointed out in post #1 itself, and certainly, no later than post #2. But people seem to batter terms they do not understand, like "universe" when they mean "solar system" or possibly "galaxy."

This galaxy is so large that we can't even see the other side of it. We can't even see into the next spiral arm.

Hell...some astronomers disagree over WHICH spiral arm we are in to begin with!

And every few years, they revise their assessment of the size and shape of our own galaxy. E.g., they only recently declared our Milky Way to be a barred spiral.

The British press throws terms out meaninglessly, without any understanding of what they are saying.

Sauron

22
posted on 10/29/2010 10:16:04 PM PDT
by sauron
("Truth is hate to those who hate Truth" --unknown)

That’s the risk of such a long term project. That technology could overcome some of the speed barriers we face. And having waited may prove to be the answer, yet it’s a chicken and egg problem. If you don’t try, you don’t fail, and you don’t learn. So if we find a way to travel to a nearby star that has a habital planet, we must go even if the posibilty exists that future technology may make your first attempt seem juvinile and foolish. Won’t out great grand children look back at us and say “they had it all wrong”. I certainly hope so or we have failed as forefathers.

Where are you going to get to in the galaxy in a hundred years? If you had a spaceship that travels at todays known technological speeds you are going to need to hollow out an astroid, have a reproducing community of travelers with all the accompanying life forms that make life for humans possible, the ability to manufacture fuel from gases and dust collected on the way, and a good set of thrusters to speed you up and eventually speed you down to complete your journey. This group should make it somewhere in about 15 generations if they are lucky. Hopefully they will be able to stay in contact with Earth for much of the time to accelerate technological advances with their ship.

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